Anything but Vanilla...

He looked pretty shattered, too, come to think of it...

Sorrel slammed the door shut on the images that thought evoked. It was going to take a lot more than a pair of wide, here-today-gone-tomorrow shoulders to impress her.

Oh, yes.

While her friends had been dating, she’d had an early reality check on the value of romance and had focused on her future, choosing the prosaic Business Management degree and vowing that she’d be a millionaire by the time she was twenty-five.

Any man who wanted her attention would have to match her in drive and ambition. He would also have to be well groomed, well dressed, focused on his career and, most important of all, stationary.

The first two could be fixed. The third would, inevitably, be a work in progress, but her entire life had been dominated by men who caused havoc when they were around and then disappeared leaving the women to pick up the pieces. The last was non-negotiable.

Alexander West struck out on every single point, she told herself as another stitch surrendered, producing a flutter of excitement just below her waist. Anticipation. Dangerous feelings that, before she knew it, could run out of control and wreck her lifeplan, no matter how firmly nailed down.

‘What, exactly, are you doing here?’ she demanded. If the cold air swirling around at her back wasn’t enough to cool her down, all she had to do was remind herself that he belonged to Ria.

She was doing a pretty good job of cool and controlled, at least on the surface. Having faced down sceptical bank managers, sceptical marketing men and sceptical events organisers, she’d had plenty of practice keeping the surface calm even when her insides were churning. Right now hers felt as if a cloud of butterflies had moved in.

‘That’s none of your business, either.’

‘Actually, it is. Ria supplies me with ice cream for my business and since she has apparently left you in charge for the day...’ major stress on ‘apparently’ ‘...you should be aware that, while you are in a food-preparation area, you are required to wear a hat,’ she continued, in an attempt to crush both him and the disturbing effect he and his worn-out seams were having on her concentration. ‘And a white coat.’

A white coat would cover those shoulders and thighs and then she would be able to think straight.

‘Since Knickerbocker Gloria is no longer in business,’ he replied, ‘that’s not an issue.’ Had he placed the slightest emphasis on knicker? He nodded in the direction of the cartons she had piled up on the table beside the freezer and said, ‘If you’ll be good enough to return the stock to the freezer, I’ll see you off the premises.’

It took a moment for his words to filter through.

‘Stock? No longer in... What on earth are you talking about? Ria knows I’m picking up this order today. When will she be here?’

‘She won’t.’

‘Excuse me?’ She understood the words, but they were spinning around in her brain and wouldn’t line up. ‘Won’t what?’

‘Be here. Any time soon.’ He shrugged, then, taking pity on her obvious confusion—he was probably used to women losing the power of speech when he flexed his biceps—he said, ‘She had an unscheduled visit from the Revenue last week. It seems that she hasn’t been paying her VAT. Worse, she’s been ignoring their letters on the subject and you know how touchy they get about things like that.’

‘Not from personal experience,’ she replied, shocked to her backbone. Her books were updated on a daily basis, her sales tax paid quarterly by direct debit. Her family had lived on the breadline for a very long time after one particularly beguiling here-today-gone-tomorrow man had left her family penniless.

She was never going back there.

Ever.

There was nothing wrong with her imagination, however. She knew that ‘touchy’ was an understatement on the epic scale. ‘What happened? Exactly,’ she added.

‘I couldn’t say, exactly. Using my imagination to fill the gaps I’d say that they arrived unannounced to carry out an audit, took one look at her books and issued her with an insolvency notice,’ he said, without any discernible emotion.

‘But that means—’

‘That means that nothing can leave the premises until an inventory has been made of the business assets and the debts paid or, alternatively, she’s been declared bankrupt and her creditors have filed their claims.’

‘What? No!’ As her brain finally stopped freewheeling and the cogs engaged, she put her hand protectively on top of the ices piled up beside her. ‘I have to have these today. Now. And the other ices I ordered.’ Then felt horribly guilty for putting her own needs first when Ria was in such trouble.

Sorrel had always struggled with Ria’s somewhat cavalier attitude to business. She’d done everything she could to organise her but it was like pushing water uphill. If she was in trouble with the taxman, though, she must be frightened to death.

‘That would be the champagne sorbet that you can’t find,’ Alexander said, jerking her back to her own problem.

‘Amongst other things.’ At least he’d had his ears as well as his eyes open while he’d been ogling her underwear. ‘Perhaps they’re still in the kitchen freezer?’ she suggested, fingers mentally crossed. ‘I don’t imagine that she would have been thinking too clearly.’ Then, furious, ‘Why on earth didn’t she call me if she was in trouble? She knew I would have helped.’

‘She called me.’

‘And you came racing, ventre à terre, to rescue her?’ Her sarcasm covered a momentary pang of envy for such devotion. If he’d been devoted, she reminded herself, he’d have been here, supporting her instead of gallivanting around the world, beachcombing, no doubt with obligatory dusky maiden in attendance. Sending Ria the odd postcard when he could be bothered.

‘Hardly “belly to the earth”. I was in a Boeing at thirty thousand feet,’ he replied, picking up on the sarcasm and returning it with interest.

‘The modern equivalent,’ she snapped back. But he had come. ‘So? What are you going to do? Sort things out? Put the business back on a proper footing?’ she asked, torn between hope and doubt. What Ria needed was an accountant who couldn’t be twisted around her little finger. Not some lotus-eater.

‘No. I’m here to shut up shop. Knickerbocker Gloria is no longer trading.’

‘But...’

‘But what?’

‘Never mind.’

She would do her level best to help Ria save her business just as soon as the Jefferson job was over. Right now it was her reputation that was on the line. Without that sorbet, she was toast and she wasn’t about to allow Ria’s beefcake toy boy to stand in her way.

TWO

Ideas should be clear and ice cream thick. A Spanish Proverb

—from Rosie’s ‘Little Book of Ice Cream’

‘Do you mind?’ Sorrel asked, when he didn’t move or step aside to allow her through to the preparation room.

Alexander West was considerably taller than her, but not so tall—thanks to her four-inch heels—that she was forced to crick her neck to look him in the eye. A woman in business had to learn to stand her ground and, if she were ever to be made Chancellor of the Exchequer, her first act on taking office would be to make four-inch designer heels a tax-deductible expense.

‘Actually, I do,’ he said.

Terrific. A businessman would understand, be reasonable. Alexander West might be a travelling man who could, no doubt, make himself understood in a dozen languages, but he wasn’t talking hers.

Never mind. She hadn’t got this far without becoming multi-lingual herself...

‘Please, Mr West...’ she began, doing her best to ignore his disintegrating T-shirt, his close-fitting jeans, the scent of warm male skin prickling her nose, loosening her bones...

It was tough being a woman in business. Tough running events. A woman had to use whatever tools came to hand. With banks it was her ability to put together a solid business plan; with clients it was her intuitive understanding of what they wanted; with uncooperative staff at hotels she occasionally had to resort to the sharp edge of her tongue, but only as a last resort. The most effective tool in the box she’d always found to be a smile and this wasn’t the moment to hold back. She gave him the full, wide-screen, Technicolor version she’d inherited from her mother. The one known in the family as ‘the heartbreaker’, although in her case the only heart that had suffered any damage was her own.

‘Alexander...’ She switched to his first name, needing to make an ally of him, involve him in her problem. ‘This is important.’

She had his attention now and his smile faded until all she could see was a white starburst of lines around those hot blue eyes where they had been screwed up against the sun. Like a tractor-beam in an old science fiction movie, they drew her towards the seductive curve of his lower lip, pulling her in...